New Max Payne 3 trailer shows a game that’s Payne in name only

Even though Max Payne is right there in the title of the upcoming Max Payne 3 …

I continue to be amazed at how dramatically Rockstar is planning to change the Max Payne series for its upcoming third offering. The new trailer below shows just how far the series has strayed from the hard-bitten film noir style that characterized the first two games, with a new, organized-crime-heavy storyline that comes off like a warmed over Grand Theft Auto subplot.

Perhaps that's appropriate for a game written by GTA and Red Dead Redemption scribe Dan Houser, rather than the Finnish developers of the first two games. But it's a bit jarring to go from a dark, personal tale of revenge and redemption over the murder of Max's own wife in the first game to what seems to be a simple tracking mission for the overtly sexed-up wife of a "legitimate businessman" that's ordering Max around in the upcoming sequel.

Not that this necessarily means the game itself won't be interesting. I'm actually pretty intrigued by the efforts Rockstar is making to add more fluid animation and gameplay to the third-person shooter genre. The way Max can deliberately run in one direction while firing back over his shoulder in this design and technology trailer looks particularly promising.

Still, I'm not sure why Rockstar tried to squeeze the Max Payne name and character into this kind of storyline, rather than using it to start a new franchise. Replacing Max's thin build, black coat and dark demeanor with a bearded, shaved head, Hawaiian-shirted action hero sporting a beer belly and a penchant for one-liners turns the character into something so unrecognizable that it barely makes sense to call it part of the same series. No, the presence of slow-motion "bullet time" effects isn't all you need to make a game a Max Payne title—some resemblance to the character and overall feel of the first two games would be nice as well.

So from now on, I'll still be looking forward to Max Payne 3, but I'm going to be considering it a totally separate franchise from the first two titles—a reboot that shares a name but not a heritage. I think everyone will be better off this way.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.